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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23957101">Healing is Not a Straight Line</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin'>kaeorin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Loki's Lullabies [37]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anxiety, Comfort, F/M, Fear, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Past Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Protective Loki (Marvel), Reader-Insert, Trauma</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 15:26:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,827</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23957101</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When your past keeps you up at night, Loki is there. (Implied past domestic violence. Please be aware.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Loki (Marvel)/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Loki's Lullabies [37]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>256</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Healing is Not a Straight Line</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Please note: There are a few moments in this fic wherein the reader blames themselves for allowing the abuse to happen, or not being able to stop it. <span class="u">That’s the reader’s abuse speaking. It is absolutely 100% <b>not my view</b> and it is also <b>not the truth.</b></span> Abuse is always the fault of the abuser, not the abused. If you’ve survived something like this (and I’m not overly explicit or descriptive in here), or you’re currently going through something like this, it is not your fault.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first time Loki had to shake you awake, you burst into tears. It wasn’t Loki’s fault. In that brief, dizzying moment where your brain was still half-dreaming, and before you realized where you actually were, you were back in His bed. You’d woken Him, and those were His hands on your shoulders, tearing you out of sleep and ready to scream at you for waking him.</p><p>When your terror died down, you only cried harder. It had shifted from fear to mortification. You were safe in your own bed, in your own apartment, beside a man who only ever looked at, spoke to, or touched you with the sweetest tenderness, and you were still remembering Him. </p><p>Poor Loki had had no idea what was going on. He’d tried touching you softly, but that only made you flinch, and you had tried to choke out your apologies. When you were finally a little bit more under control, you had reached out to take his hand, and he’d squeezed yours. “You were whimpering,” he said. His voice was rough with sleep, but there was no trace of irritation in it no matter how hard you tried to search for it. “You’re safe here, darling. I won’t let anyone hurt you. You know that, right?”</p><p>You’d nodded miserably even as you felt like a child for sniffling at him. He’d reached over for the tissues on your nightstand and delicately dabbed at the tracks of your tears before handing it over to you. When you were ready to lie back down again, he’d whispered your name in the dark, and then asked if he could hold you. Of course you told him yes.</p><p>He never pushed for details. Every now and then, you’d find yourself shocked by something he’d done, usually a reaction he had that was the complete opposite of what He would have done. Loki’s go-to reaction when it came to things that you did—good or bad—was to laugh to himself and pull you in for a kiss. He never raised his voice. His hands never even twitched. Usually, tucked safely against his chest and marveling once again at how things could be, you would fumble through some kind of explanation. Only then did his hands clench into fists, did he hold you with an edge of brittleness in his body. He hated hearing about the man who had come before him, and you hated talking about Him, but you were still so fucked up that you felt like you had to sometimes.</p><p>At night, in the dark, sometimes he would stretch out on top of you like he could shield you from your past with his body alone. Slowly, purposefully, he would trace ticklish patterns against the skin of your belly, let them wind up along your chest. He rarely said much during this ritual, only watched his fingertips press into your skin. The haziness in his eyes always threw you off. It wasn’t quite hunger, wasn’t quite awe, but instead some combination of the two. No one had ever looked at you like that before, and it always made you shiver and want to hide from him. </p><p>But he didn’t crow at you about how your fearful body reacted to him. He didn’t smirk or wink or lick his lips at you. Sometimes, in the darkest parts of your mind, you blamed yourself for letting things get so bad before. Part of you was still convinced that it was your fault. If you hadn’t flinched the first time He had raised his hand as though to hit you, maybe He wouldn’t have realized how much He liked having that power over you. If you hadn’t had to blink back tears when He spat venom at you, maybe He wouldn’t have wanted to keep doing it. Maybe if you hadn’t fought so hard, your nails tearing through His skin, when He threw you to the floor and stretched out on top of you, He wouldn’t have realized how much stronger He was and wouldn’t have wanted to keep coming back for more.</p><p>Loki was even stronger than you were—he was stronger than <i>He</i> was, even—but he never used that strength to make you afraid. You had no doubt that he could basically do whatever he wanted to you and you’d have no hope of getting free, but he only ever touched you with soft affection. On bad days, when his own past haunted him and brought him down, when you couldn’t possibly have blamed him for snapping at you or pushing you away, he never did. Loki only ever wanted you closer, no matter how he was feeling, and when you let yourself melt into him, he always kissed every part of you that he could reach. When you were awake, it was easy to be comfortable with him. You could almost even be <i>normal</i> because it was so easy to be certain of him.</p><p>But the nightmares kept coming. Thankfully, they were never quite as bad as that first night with Loki, but you still sometimes startled yourself awake. Usually, Loki was already awake. He heard everything. He always waited to make sure that you were fully awake before reaching out to touch you, to pull you against him or to comb his fingers through your hair. Somehow, he always seemed to know when you were on the verge of self-loathing. He never let you spend long feeling embarrassed or hating yourself for being a grown adult who still woke up crying sometimes. You were still so guarded, so braced for hatred, that his tenderness shocked you. That seemed unfair to him, to this man who had never shown you anything <i>but</i> tenderness, but he never once seemed irritated by you.</p><p>Some nights, all it took was his fingers in your hair, against your scalp, before you were drifting back to sleep. More often, he would tuck you safely against his chest and talk to you. On the worst nights, though, you had to get up. You had to untangle yourself from the sheets and hide out in the living room with the lights bright around you, or you had to get in the shower to let the thousands of pinpricks of boiling hot water wash away the memory of what came before. Loki let you go. On these bad nights, when you cringed away from him even once you were fully awake, he would whisper your name and sweet words of adoration to you, but then he would let you leave. </p><p>For a while.</p><p>On those nights, he always let you have your time to yourself, but then got up to join you. If you were in the living room, you would hear him pad into the kitchen and fuss around with making tea. Then he’d come into the living room and press your mug into your hands before tucking himself into the other end of the couch. He didn’t push. His attention always seemed largely focused on his tea. He didn’t study your face in hopes of trying to make you talk to him, but you always ended up talking to him. Laughing at yourself, you would tell him about the dream that had driven you out of bed. You would do your best to make it all sound stupid, to make it clear that you knew it was stupid that it frightened you so badly, but he never laughed at you. Often, he’d let his hand rest on the cushion between you, and you always ended up reaching out to lace your fingers through his.</p><p>If you were in the shower, he’d join you. He did it slowly, in stages, and if you ever gave even the slightest hint of a sign that you were uncomfortable, he’d back away. But you always let him join you. How could you not? He’d undress and slowly open the curtain, then step under the spray with you.  The promise of his presence gradually made you stop trying to burn off your own skin with the water, because he always seemed uncomfortable in the boiling water you loved. He would kiss your forehead, murmur soft love to you, bring your hand up to his lips so he could kiss your fingers. Then he would pick up your bar of soap and wash you. </p><p>In the shower, his touch was never lecherous. He never made you feel like he wanted something you weren’t ready to give. Even when his hands glided over your softest parts, he didn’t take advantage. Sometimes you cried. It could be too much, sometimes, the stark difference between what you had once allowed to happen to you and what was happening now. When you did cry, he would always pull his hands away and study your face, not wanting to go on until he was sure that he had your permission. Of course he always did. </p><p>When you were done in the shower, he always made sure to help you dry before attempting to do the same for himself. That made you feel silly, but also...cared for. Maybe you got a little bratty with him sometimes, insisting on trying to rub a towel over his perfect skin so he wouldn’t get cold while he was trying to dry <i>you</i> off. But still, he only ever laughed and pulled you into his arms and kissed your temple.</p><p>And he would not allow you to thank him. Any time you tried, his eyebrows got heavy and he shook his head and told you that he loved you. <i>I’m not doing any of this for thanks, love, I’m doing it because that’s what you do when you love someone. You’ve shown me that. </i>Loki, who listened so intently any other time you tried to speak to him, even when you felt like you were choking on words that wouldn’t come, staunchly refused to be thanked. It frustrated and warmed you all at once. After all, if he needed to be thanked for doing any of these things for you, perhaps he would run out of good will someday, and simply stop. </p><p>Slowly, you began to substitute “I love you”s and “I’m so happy you’re mine”s for “Thank you”s and “I’m sorry”s. He made you laugh. He made you dance. He made you blush. He made you feel like yourself again, like something strong and brave and not quite unbroken, but...renewed. He let you hide yourself against his chest when you needed to, but he also clearly took great pleasure in your strength when you didn’t need to hide. He was everything to you, not because his power had shattered and limited your world, but because he let you steep in it and take bits of it for yourself.</p><p>Over time, the nightmares about your past stopped coming. They turned into dreams about your future.</p><p>With him.</p>
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